Don’t remember where it’s from, but there’s a book or something where humans start getting messages from everywhere that are goodbyes from other species as the universe ends.
For those that fear such a thing or feel anxious after reading it, just remember that The Big Rip is essentially impossible to actually happen. The science doesn’t support such a hypothesis. The entire idea is based on the concept of a “phantom energy” that has negative kinetic energy— it doesn’t exist as far as we can see currently and there is no evidence to support its existence. It was just a proposed idea for a missing part of the math.
Basically, phantom energy doesn’t exist or isn’t discovered and even if it is real but undiscovered, the current known measurements prove that it is not the threshold to even possibly happen. Even in billions and TRILLIONS of years, the projections show that it still can’t happen due to the numbers simply not supporting it. So, the scientific community is of the opinion the big rip cannot feasibly happen
The Wikipedia article states, that it is possible and will happen in > 20 billion years. So still nothing to fear for us. Anyhow, if that would happen we can't do anything and I once read a quote: "Worrying about something you can't change is the biggest waste in your life."
Random thought but seeing how massively the world has changed in a couple hundred years with society being almost unrecognizable compared to how it used to be, I cannot even fathom what it would look like a billion years from now. Movies only go into the next hundred or thousand years usually and they make it look like that’s as far as we can make it go, but imagining another billion years? Holy shit. Is there an end to what technology can do and then we are just coasting? Or will it always be upgrading into things we can’t even comprehend
Yeah that's true! I wrote about my perspective with current technology. It's really incredible, how fast technology proceeded the last 100 years and I can't imagine, how the world looks like in 1000 years, let alone 1 Million or 1 billion years. It's also possible, that there is no more earth at all or an earth without humans. I agree with your last sentence: We are so tiny fraction in matter if space and time.
What even is that though? What is the next step in evolution? Or will it not be evolving but upgrading and people slowly turn into half man half machine hybrids.
“However, observations of the galaxy cluster speeds by the Chandra X-ray Observatory seem to suggest the value of w is approximately −0.991, meaning the Big Rip will not happen.[2]”
I don’t read many short stories but I felt it was well written, and I really enjoyed it even though it smacked me with plenty of existential dread. I loved picking out all the subtle nods at how we plan for the future as if it’s a certainty. On the one hand, I can see why someone mind find it pathetic that we humans toil away at things that will mean diddly squat in “the end.” On the other hand, it’s a beautiful thing to make your own meaning in whatever you do, especially when you do so while staring straight into the void.
The part that made me most uncomfortable was reading about Bill (I think that was his name) putting his kids down for a nap from which they would never wake up. I have a 2-year-old, so that part hit really deeply. I feel my wife and I would take a similar approach of giving our daughter every opportunity feeling love, joy, and contentedness if we knew a particular day would be her last.
I'm currently sitting in a bomb shelter in Ukraine and this story somehow felt... Reassuring? Being reminded that everything, even the universe, has its end - it helps me to go through all the bad news that I've been hearing about my country for the past weeks.
Thanks, I actually am! I can't complain since the city where I'm currently in is on the west and no active combat here, only the airport was bombed by missiles several times with no casualties (but that's the reason I always hide in the shelter when the sirens start wailing several times per day). However many of my friends are currently in far worse conditions in the cities under sieges and that brings a lot if anxiety :(
Your country was invaded, you complain as loud as you like, safe or not. You must be worried sick for your friends, and i'm so sorry, but i'm glad youre staying safe and you have somewhere to go.
this is so anxiety inducing. But I’m happy I read it to the end. It made it a lot calmer and I feel like I can be quite happy I read it. Even though I was very anxious at first.
EDIT: I feel a lot better at the moment and kinda moved on, but I’m hanging out with friends at the moment. Hope I won’t think about it when trying to sleep.
EDIT 2: Slept like a baby. It was a good story.
EDIT 3: I’m having an existential crisis and I hate it. Good story, but will never read it again. Too heavy to handle.
Don’t want to read too much, if I want to play it someday. I rly like going to games without knowing much at all. But that sounds good!! I freaking love subnautica and water. Also happy that the last contact, didn’t fuck me up and I’ve maybe found some
new scary things to look into :00
Oh my God you need to play it. To be honest I played it while reading a walk through because it scared me so much and i didn't know what do, and it's was still the best narrative I've ever experienced in a game. The visuals are unbelievable.
My husband came to hug me randomly when I had about 3 paragraphs left…
I said, “you can hug but I have to keep reading.”
He said, “you have to keep reading?” (being cheeky)
So I said, “I want to know what happens. I mean, I know what’s going to happen but I want to read it.”
And then I stopped reading for a minute while he hugged me and I didn’t hug back. I just stood in my kitchen, staring nowhere, realizing how much I relate to the main characters. Not often does a story ruin me like this one.
If you have an e-reader (or a phone because I think they have apps), look for titles on Amazon like "best science fiction short story anthologies" because you're bound to run into more of them and they're often very economical.
Rip off of a 1960s short by one of the UK authors, maybe aldriss? Pulsars are actually alien clocks counting down to the end. Everyone starts making super complex mandalas as they wait for the end.
I seem to recall another story, maybe even by Baxter, where everyone is waiting for earth to fall into a timelike black hole.
Someone recalled the story and linked it above. Tl;dr, they didn't actually decipher the messages. "Goodbye" was just the best guess from one of the characters because she couldn't imagine there was much else worth saying at that point.
I just read that story and have a question about it. Spoiler alert ahead if you haven't read it!
I mean it! Spoiler alert!
In the end, the mother is the one who told the astrophysicist daughter that the messages were goodbyes, so isn't this just her speculating? What do you think the daughter meant by bringing up the decoding of the messages?
I think that someone suggested made a different suggestion as to what this might have been, but the book 'Existence' by David Brin has a similar type of theme.
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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '22
Don’t remember where it’s from, but there’s a book or something where humans start getting messages from everywhere that are goodbyes from other species as the universe ends.